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13 reasons to visit a museum about... coffin fittings

A museum dedicated to a defunct factory that once made coffin accessories? It really doesn’t sound like it should work.

Yet it's often the offbeat themes that inspire the keenest following. Take the Pencil Museum in Cumbria, for example. Telegraph Travel's Oliver Smith recently dismissed it as one ofBritain's most "boring" museums, a criticism that prompted a flurry of emails from angry readers who love its dissection of the humble writing tool. And there’s something about this quirky new museum in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter that’s likely to fire an enthusiastic reaction. Here are a few of the reasons why:

1. It shines a light on Victorian extravagance towards death…

The Victorians were extraordinary high achievers. They also had quite an obsession with death and its paraphernalia – hence the existence of this modest factory in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. So important was the final journey in the era that even poorer families would try to give their loved ones as ostentatious a send-off as possible – often when if they could ill afford to.

The Newman Brothers Coffin Fitting Works was founded towards the end of the 19th century, to service mourners when this attitude was at its zenith. All the coffin furniture you could imagine – including handles, breastplates, crucifixes, shrouds and robes – was made here and exported around the world.

Dr Julian Litten, once of the V&A and an expert on the Victorian attitudes towards death, describes Newman Brothers as “the most important manufacturer of such items at a time when England was regarded as the template for funerary pomp and extravagance.”

2. …and perhaps something about today’s attitudes towards sex

At least according to Simon Buteux of the Birmingham Conservation Trust, who showed me around shortly after the museum’s official opening last month. “Victorians were completely obsessed with death, but swept sex under the carpet. Today, it’s the other way round.”

The museum shines a light on Victorian attitudes towards death (Getty Images)

3. It’s Birmingham’s industrial history in a nutshell

In the city once known as the workshop of the world, this is a quirky insight into the rise and decline of a mighty manufacturing city that helped shape the Industrial Revolution. Businesses that evolved a little later, like the Newman Brothers factory, helped to make the city a prosperous place in the 20th Century.

But then a combination of factors collided: foreign competition, more expensive labour costs, cremations, and a cooling of interest towards all things funereal. The business stagnated despite a few half-hearted attempts at innovation, then was finally abandoned in 1998.

4. Re-visit the bad old days of health and safety (without taking any risks)

“Elf 'n' safety” gets a bad rap these days. But by looking at the narrow crevices in the workshop where men stamped out coffin fittings endlessly (they used to be paid by number of items produced), amid the deafening clang of heavy machinery, people might not be so criticical of today’s safety-conscious culture. In a similar sort of industrial set-up in the 1970s, a young man called Tony Iommi lost his fingertips at a nearby sheet metal factory. It didn’t stop him becoming the Black Sabbath guitarist, mind you.

Picture: Jane Baker

5. You can watch an RIP decoration being made...

(But under strict safety conditions).

6. Get a sense of how workers were treated

It’s not just the safety conditions that make you pause. Next time you find yourself cursing your workplace, make a trip to the Newman Brothers factory and its shroud sewing room, which has been restored to how it looked of the 1960s. There’s a line of sewing machines, where seamstresses used to produce coffin linings all day long with the factory window in their line of sight. The only thing is, nothing else is – the owners put frosted glass up so workers could not be distracted by the view.

Note the frosted windows (Picture: Jane Baker)

It's touches like this that make you realise the Newman family – connected to the factory until the 1950s – were not the enlightened employers that the Cadbury family were just down the road. Conservationists say there were no better nor worse than other factory owners.

7. You’ll learn a vital lesson in employment relations: NEVER mess with the tea break

Despite the working conditions, there was no history of industrial action at the factory – at least until there was a threat to cut tea breaks down from 15 minutes to ten. Carnage was unleashed. Or at least a very real prospect of workers downing their tools and hitting the factory’s productivity. Taken aback by the strong feelings, management quickly backtracked.

8. See where notable people had their final adornments made

The coffins of Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, and the Queen Mother were all decorated with wares from the Newman Brothers factory. It may have closed down, but sales of its goods were so widespread that many accessories are most likely still being used today.

Winston Churchill's funeral (Getty Images)

9. The museum marks a victory for conservation

For years, the museum restoration didn’t look like it was going to happen. Recession hit the campaign to save the factory, and the idea of preserving the factory - set in motion by its final owner - looked to have stalled. In the last few years did the project get back on track, with a mix of funding from English Heritage, the lottery and Birmingham Council totalling around £2million.

10. You’ll discover the difference between a casket and coffin

Without resorting to Google, who can explain the difference between a coffin and a casket? Thought not. The old lid-opening trick that Dracula shows off in cartoons? That’s an American casket, rather than a traditional coffin with its lid nailed on.

Coffin or casket? Picture: Jane Baker

Of course, as elsewhere, American fashions also influenced the funeral trade, and the factory also began manufacturing accessories for caskets for the new-fangled burial style from across the pond.

11. Learn how you sell a shroud

During the factory’s heyday, the travelling salesman was at the heart of the business. Strange as it may seem, they would pack their case full of crucifixes and other funeral-related accessories – and ply their wares. One salesman in particular was known for being something of a charmer – the women in the factory were apparently very fond of packing his travelling bag…

The salesman's travelling bag Picture: Jane Baker

12. And see a highly personalised one

The Victorians may have been obsessed with death, but the vogue for going out in style remains, as the Aston Villa and Birmingham City-styled shrouds on display show you.

Embalming fluid and other essential items Picture: Jane Baker

13. In short, it’s a terrific new small museum

And, with its focus on the people who helped make the factory tick, it is surprisingly not morbid. There’s the company secretary who ended up owning the factory; the shroud seamstress who wouldn’t tell her latest beau what she really made until she wanted to get rid of him; and the travelling salesman who was saved from a hostile IRA man in Ireland when he opened his travelling bag and showed off its religious contents.